For a heart-beat she stood rigid, then her hands clasped: an instant thus she stood, and then stretched forth her arms with an infinitude of yearning helplessness, an agony of tenderness and pleading, a world of relief in the gesture.
"You have come," she said.
"YOU HAVE COME!"
In all his after-life, Homer Wilson never forgot the awful accent in which these words—meant-to-be-welcoming words to the man for whom she had suffered so much—were uttered. Horrified at the cruel mistake he had caused, he stood for a moment motionless; the next, he had sprung forward—for Myron Holder fathomed her mistake and fell without a sound.
Homer caught her before she touched the ground, and holding her in his arms, distraught with self-reproach, strove to awaken her by calling her name.
"Myron—Myron," he whispered, with all the intensity of suppressed feeling, "Myron—Myron."
Her eyes unclosed; she did not stir, nor flush, nor speak. She only looked at him out of eyes which were terrible in their tragic despair; eyes which seemed to accuse him of his manhood, that rendered him akin to her betrayer.
As Homer Wilson looked upon that pallid face, which the wan light of dawn illumined palely, his soul was suddenly smitten with self-contempt. What was the grief before which he had abased himself? What was it to endure beside open shame? Life had seemed to him almost insupportable, endurable only because he felt he had not merited the pain. What must it be to this woman, knowing she had bought contempt at the price of her own folly?